A Taxi Movie Idea and a Lab Disaster.

One of our non-medical semi-regular customers was an older gentleman who lived by himself. He used to call us to go to and from the grocery store. The others used to complain about him because the fare was small and, as he was older and not in the best shape, he had difficulty carrying his grocery bags. He had to take a number of trips up steps, through a gate and up a walkway to his house. I used to help him and he was always very grateful. Then he stopped calling. As he was so old, we assumed he had passed away.

From that customer, I came up with a movie idea. It would follow my story, starting from when I shot the student film to when I got fired at CBN to my efforts to get my film done to my struggles as a cab driver to this customer. I imagined that this unassuming, lonely old man was actually very rich but had no family. But because I was kind to him, when he dies, he leaves me his estate, giving me the means to fulfill my dream. Alas, reality was otherwise. I wasn’t even making enough to live on.


Meanwhile, the Regent film festival was fast approaching. My film was still not back from the lab so I had to push for it. It finally got back at the last hour so I didn’t even have a chance to view it first. There wasn’t anything I could do about it now anyway so I hoped all would be in good order for the big day. It wasn’t.

When you shoot a film, you shoot over a period of time in differing conditions and times of day. But those shots get edited together next to each other with different colors and exposures. The film needs to go through two processes in the lab called timing and color correction to even out the disparate elements into a smooth experience. As the film played at the festival, I could see that those processes had not been done.

As it showed, I was cringing the whole time as I saw the unevenness of the shots. People were laughing at the right moments though, especially the Dean, Bill Brown, who was sitting behind me. It seemed like maybe his laughter was a little forced though, like he was just trying to be encouraging in a bad situation.

When you direct a film, you hope that the writer will be happy with what you’ve done with his material. They have a vision in their mind, which you can never duplicate but you hope that it they will at least like what you’ve done. I said as much in a conversation I had afterward with the writer and a few others. He was noncommittal so I knew he was probably just as disappointed in how some of the elements turned out as I was. But I had done what I had done. I had made the choices I had made. There was nothing I could do about it now.

Regent also sponsored a showing of the films in Los Angeles a few months later. So now I had to get the film back to the lab to get everything corrected. The lab was a couple of hours away so I had to take a day off work to go show them what I was talking about. They saw their mistake right away.


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